


Gravitas

by pulpriter



Category: Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries
Genre: F/M, Mostly unrelieved angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-10
Updated: 2016-11-10
Packaged: 2018-08-30 03:37:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,756
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8517028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pulpriter/pseuds/pulpriter
Summary: Some serious issues that might confront our favorite characters





	1. The Man She Loved and Lost

**Author's Note:**

> I've been away, and upon my return, I give you---angst? You've been warned.  
> Please review.  
> These characters are not mine, but they won't let me go.

The Honourable Miss Phryne Fisher was sitting alone in her elegant parlour. The beautiful surroundings had often brought her a sense of peace, but it was not to be so today. She was lost in her thoughts, disconsolate. She was thinking of the man she had loved and lost. 

He had been kind, and he had been brave, and yes, he had been foolish. He had held himself apart, but he had also risked his very heart. She had spent time with many attractive men before him, but his face was the one she finally turned to, his eyes were the ones that saw her and knew her for who she was.

He cared about what was right. He cared about her rights. He sometimes allowed what was right to supersede the law, of which he claimed to be a servant and not its master. He was possessed of a philosophical bent and a love for Shakespeare. The Police Academy was his only opportunity to further his education, but his life was spent in study. 

And oh, how rare: he had loved her intelligence.  
Phryne sighed. She had never met his equal. 

There had been so many adventures together. So much excitement, so many near misses. So many risks, so many close calls. So many times she had wondered how they could come out on the other side. Sometimes, it seemed they would not. Yet they always had…until the day came when they ran up against a situation they could not find their way through together. 

She had railed against it. She wasn’t ready to let their relationship come to an end. She could not give in, she wouldn’t! She could not bear to let this thing separate them.

He, on the other hand, had moved on with sad acceptance. He fought it as long as he could, but there came a day when the fight was too much for him. He didn’t want to leave, but realized that there was a point beyond which it was not possible for him to stay.

Phryne had raged, how she had raged! But in the end, there was no point. It could not be undone. She would have to find her way without him, but after so many years, she had lost the knack. 

Now she was alone, and alone with her thoughts. 

This kind of misery always led her to seek solace at the cemetery. She stood at Janey’s grave and stared, lost in thought, for a long time. She had lost her sister far too soon, far too young, and yet at last she had found her and restored her to a proper burial. It was something Phryne had made to come right, at last, so long ago. 

She had been careless about religion for most of her life, not being able to reconcile an angry, jealous God with anything she wanted any part of: but in these later years, Phryne yearned for the thought of more than just this brief existence. Dot’s certainty that she and Hugh would live and love eternally was quite appealing. Phryne had begun to hope that there might be a way to see once more the ones she had loved. 

She moved on, to the grave just on the other side. The headstone was large. It was odd, she thought, to see her own name on a gravestone, but there it was. She had known when she set it up that this was what she wanted, what she would always want. And before long, someone would come along and complete the etching, which would fill in the year of her death.  
Just as she had done for him. 

She ran her hand over the etched letters. His name, beside hers. For once bowing to societal pressure, she agreed that it should be his given name, though she had never once used it. How many years had passed, now. And she still went on, although at first she had never believed she could. 

If there was any justice—she smiled to herself: how he had sought justice—if there _was_ any justice, perhaps, somehow, she and he could be together again, somewhere. 

She was ready for it to be over. So many others were gone… First she had lost Aunt Prudence, and then Mr. Butler. Mac, no longer popping by for a drink and a laugh. Cec, in that terrible accident. So many other friends, from so many other places. But the light had gone out when Jack died, and Phryne was ready for her end to come, as well. 

She longed to rejoin the man she had loved and lost.


	2. Courses

Phryne awoke in the early hours of the night. At first, she was uncertain what had interrupted her sleep. She sat up and looked around the room, at the empty pillow beside her. Then the sensation in her lower abdomen made it clear what had brought her to wakefulness.  
So, here it was, once again, just as she should have expected. Her body normally functioned on a strict schedule. She rose carefully and made her way to the toilet to tend to herself and find the hygienic items she would need. 

She hated the first day. She was always weepy.  
She felt sentimental, and vaguely out of control. She sometimes had difficulty covering up her reactions to cramping. She nearly always had headaches that her headache powders barely touched. There was so much about being a woman that she loved, but these few days each month were too much trouble. Phryne wished there were a way to make them go away.  
With everything attended to properly, she lay back down in bed in her beautiful boudoir. She gazed around the room. All was familiar. She looked over the artwork, the furniture, the sumptuous linens and pillows. It was all designed for her pleasure. She was completely at ease here. There was no one and no thing to cause her any dismay, or trouble her in any way. No obligations at all…

Her mind flew back in time, a few weeks past. Even though it had caused her no end of worry, it had been a glorious evening. Her charming Inspector had been more compelling than ever, and they had been swept away on a whirlwind of feeling. Oh, what a delightful revelation he was! Such a pleasure to watch as his steely grip on his emotions was stripped away, layer by layer, until he was just as needy as she was. They had been lost in sensation, mindless, drawn together inexorably, incapable of thought.

Ridiculous, really, to have been so affected the next morning, when she woke, glanced around the room, and realized the familiar bakelite case still sat on the dresser, unopened. How worried she had been! So many times, she had tried to imagine what she would do, how she would handle it. What choices she would have to make. Over and over, around and around in her head, the questions and the possible answers had swirled.  
What would she do? Would she tell him? Worst of all, the imagining: what kind of child might come from their union? She couldn’t stop herself. She saw phantoms of a laughing boy with piercing eyes and a mop of dark hair, daring her to discipline him, then running close for a hug; or sometimes she saw a quiet, earnest girl with soft curls down her back, loving the world of her books, gentle and kind. It had become much too real to her. 

But no matter. It was not real. It was all over. She had nothing to worry about. No unwanted attachments, no entanglements, no fear that he would feel trapped and try to do the “right thing” anyway. None of that would come to pass. He would never know. She was free. Everything was fine, now. 

A single tear made its way down her flawless cheek, and then another, and another, until she buried her face in her hands and sobbed.  
She hated the first day. She was always weepy.


	3. Eleven

Senior Detective Inspector Jack Robinson arrived at the bijou house on the corner and strode up to the front door. It was becoming a familiar habit to share dinner with Miss Phryne Fisher, although she still took care to invite him each time, and he still waited to be invited. Miss Fisher had made sure he knew he was expected this evening, and he had enjoyed the anticipation of her company while he finished his work at City South.  
Mr. Butler answered his knock, welcoming him as always, and announcing him to Miss Fisher. Jack walked comfortably into the parlour, where Phryne waited. She smiled when she saw him, although there was some other emotion behind her smile. Because it was his habit to give people time to say what they needed to say, he did not ask her about it, but simply waited.  
They chatted, summed up their latest case, sipped their cocktails, and in due time, went in to dinner. They enjoyed each delicious course Mr. Butler served. They discussed current events, on the local scene and in the world at large. At last, they retired to the parlour again, to enjoy an after dinner drink. 

They sat companionably side by side for a while, so much at ease with each other that they could sit in silence. Jack would have enjoyed it if he hadn’t sensed that touch of _tristesse_ in Phryne’s gaze. He decided he had waited long enough to find out what was bothering her.  
“Phryne. Something is wrong tonight. Is there anything I can do?” he asked.  
Her eyes widened, and she bit her lip. “I might have known I couldn’t put anything past you,” she said, but it was not said with amusement, nor was it flirtatious.  
Jack waited. Phryne looked down at her lap. “I went to the cemetery today,” she said.  
“I see,” he said, and reflected. “It’s not any sort of anniversary, though, is it?”  
“No. There was something about the day—the sun was bright, and the air was warm, and something reminded me of Janey. I just couldn’t get it out of my head, so I decided to go.”  
“But it upset you.”  
Phryne shook her head. “No, not any more than it normally would. The sadness is still there, but I’m at peace with it, now that I have my answers.” She took a deep breath, and went on. “It was a beautiful day, and I walked along the rows, walking aimlessly, really…”  
Jack began to feel a slight tension at her words—and with her next sentence, he knew. “I found your family’s section, Jack.”  
He didn’t speak, but nodded ever so slightly. Uncharacteristically, he looked away from her.  
“I didn’t mean to. I would never intrude, Jack! Please believe that,” Phryne begged.  
“Of course I believe it. It’s all right, Phryne.”  
She swallowed hard. “Both your parents…And a brother—in the War?”  
“Yes.”  
“And…” she thought she could say it, but her throat closed.  
“Yes. ‘And’.” When he spoke, he saw the telltale sheen in her eyes. He reached out to embrace her.  
When she could speak, she looked into his face and said, “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”  
“It’s all right. I don’t speak of it much.” It was the kind of understatement that seems to make sense to the bereaved. Phryne knew it well.  
Phryne pulled him even closer. His anguish was clear to her, though well hidden through years of practice. And she understood—the memory was always there, it never disappeared, it simply abated and hung just out of the way while one went about one’s life. “I always thought it was remarkable how much you understood…when I needed my answers about Janey, when Arthur died. I never had to explain anything to you. I’m sorry I didn’t ask you why.”  
Her head lay against his shoulder, and he pressed a kiss to her hair. “Some things are just not meant to be,” he said heavily. Then, without stopping to count, he added, “He would have been eleven this year.”


	4. Freeze

“Freeze.”  
The gunman trained his gun very close to Jack’s temple. A mere few seconds of inattention had allowed him to be trapped. Every muscle in the Detective Inspector’s body tensed at the feel of the cold steel against his skin.  
He had had a good run of luck, through a life full of dangerous moments, but it appeared that his luck had just run out. He could not quite conceive of a way that he could work his way out of this one.  
He had heard that, at the point of death, one saw one’s life pass before one’s eyes. He had never really credited that, but he found that he saw, not what had happened, but what had not yet happened. He was filled with regret for the things that could never be.  
He thought of beautiful Phryne…the woman who had brought him back to life, by picking, by nettling, by hectoring, by goading, by badgering, every step of the way—until it turned into meshing, matching, connecting. They had found that the sum of the whole, the two of them working together, was far and away more than the sum of the two parts, each working alone. They came to turn to each other, they came to rely on each other, and at last, they came to need each other. Slowly, carefully, each coming from a place of heartache and hurt, they had found their way and had begun forging something new, something neither of them could have imagined. Jack lamented having to miss what could have been.  
There was so much unsaid, so much undone; and they had at last been so close to finding their way to something new, something neither had imagined, but something that was theirs alone. He was sorry that he would not be able to experience it with her.  
He was especially sorry to think that Phryne, who was not far behind, would find him…after. 

All these thoughts had flown through his mind in an instant. Before he could manage to try to respond to the gunman, his worst nightmare came true: the Honourable Miss Phryne Fisher crashed through the door. She took in the entire tableau: Jack, with a gun held to his head, by a gunman who might do anything.  
“Phryne,” Jack said, calmly, deeply, “don’t think, just run.”  
He sensed rather than heard her gasp a breath. She stood still for a moment. He knew her so completely, he saw the fright in her eyes, even though it passed in a fraction of a second.  
She straightened, and adjusted her hat. “Well. You must be mad if you think I’m going to do that,” she said indignantly. She plucked at her skirt, arranging a pleat that had gone awry when she broke through the door.  
There was a careless, almost conversational tone to her remark. Jack’s jaw dropped at her words, and he turned to her in exasperation, ignoring the gunman. “Will you never listen to me?”  
She made a _moue_. “I do, Jack, certainly I do, but what you’re asking just doesn’t make any sense.”  
Jack started to step toward her as he answered, “Phryne—”  
“What the hell is wrong with you people? I’ve got a _gun!_ ” the gunman howled in frustration, waving the gun in the air for emphasis. As quick as lightning, Jack grabbed his arm, forcing it down; Phryne was beside the gunman in a few steps, hooking his legs with her foot and pulling them out from under him. He was disarmed and on the floor before he knew what had happened. 

Jack and Phryne took a moment to smile at each other in congratulation. Something deep in Phryne’s eyes made Jack think that she too had seen the sad future he had feared would come to pass. They communicated their relief to each other, although not with words.  
Thinking them distracted, their quarry made a move to escape, but the Inspector trained the gun on him and growled, “Freeze.”  
The suspect did, but not without whining, “I swear, you’re both crazy, you are.”  
Lost in each others’ eyes, his captors knew that he was right. Jack warned casually, “You’ll be the death of me, Miss Fisher.”  
Knowing all was safe, Phryne gave him an alluring look. Upturned cherry lips purred, “Not today, I won’t, Inspector.”


End file.
